I have watched four movies over the last week and want to share some thoughts on them with you. Two are older movies, and two are brand new, released just this month on Netflix.
Marty, Life Is Short
This is a documentary about actor and comedian Martin Short, directed by Lawrence Kasden. Short, of course, came to the attention of most people in the United States when he was a part of Canadian SCTV back in the late 1970's/early 1980's. He went on to greater things on television (one season as regular on Saturday Night Live), guest appearances on talk shows and acting roles in movies and countless television series. I remember him in movies like "The Three Amigos" and "Father of the Bride", but I had no awareness of just how prolific an actor that he is (116 acting credits in IMDB), including his latest huge success in the streaming series "Only Murders In The Building".This documentary includes home movies that Short himself made of both his family growing up and of his own family and friends. And those friends are a Who's Who of show business today: Steve Martin, Stephen Speilberg, Catherine O'Hara, Tom Hanks, and many, many more. The movie also tells of Short's resilience in the face of tragedy: his oldest brother was killed in an accident when Martin was 12, his mother died when he was 18, and his father died two years later. Then, he lost his wife of thirty years, Nancy Dolman, to cancer in 2010. His words about what he went through at that time and in the time that followed were particularly meaningful to me. Not included in the film was the news of his daughter Katherine's suicide earlier this year, which occurred after the film was finished. It is dedicated to her.
Two great lines from the film that sum up Short perfectly:
Steve Martin: "Say you're having a dinner party and you invite Marty. Then Marty tells you that something came up and he can't make it. You then cancel the party."
Tom Hanks: "Marty operates at the speed of joy."
You will laugh a lot watching this movie, and you will fell pain as well, but, ultimately, you will feel the "joy" to which Hanks refers.
Four Stars from The Grandstander.
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Sally Field plays a widow working as an overnight cleaning woman at a public aquarium in Washington state. It keeps her occupied and active. Lewis Pullman plays an unemployed musician who arrives in town on a mission to collect money that he feels is owed to him. They're drawn together when his crummy van breaks down and he has to take a job as Field's substitute cleaning person at the aquarium. They become tied together by their affinity for the aquarium's star attraction, an octopus named Marcellus, who serves as the voice-over narrator of the movie.
I know, doesn't make a lot of sense and it sounds terrible when you spell it out like I just did, but, trust me, this is a charming little story, and how it ends and how the characters tie together make for a delightful movie.
A word about Sally Field. She will turn 80 later this year, and she is wonderful in this movie. She has over seventy acting credits in IMDB dating back to 1962. She has done comedy and drama. She has won two Oscars and three Emmys and is a Kennedy Center Honors awardee. She played Mary Todd Lincoln for crying out loud! She has come a long way from Gidget and The Flying Nun, and, as this movie has shown, she continues to do wonderful work. She is a real treasure.
Three Stars from The Grandstander.
The Outlaw Josey Wales
(1976)
Back in March, I wrote THIS PIECE about movies that will turn fifty years old in 2026. While researching for that post, one of the movies that I found on every list for that year, but that I had never seen, was this western that starred and was directed by Clint Eastwood, and I finally got around to seeing it, fifty years after the fact.It is classic Eastwood stuff. Josey Wales seeks revenge on a band of renegade Union soldiers who murdered his wife and son and burned down his home as the Civil War was coming to an end. Along the way he meets up with an all-by-himself Indian and a family of settlers from Kansas who are seeking a better life out west. He also has to fight off various bandits, hostile Indians, and, of course, those soldiers who killed his family. Lots and lots and LOTS of people get killed in this movie and there is a lot of shooting and somehow lone man Josey/Clint manages to out wit, out shoot, and out kill all of them, no matter how outnumbered he always seems to be.
Josey Wales is the 1860's precursor to the 1970's Dirty Harry Callahan. If, like me, you are a Clint Eastwood fan, then this is a movie for you.
Three Stars from The Grandstander.
The Bride Wore Black
(1968)
French film director Francois Truffaut was an unabashed admirer of Alfred Hitchcock, and this 1968 movie was his tribute to him. If you watch it, you will see the influence that Hitchcock had on Truffaut in scene after scene. (FUN FACT: The Bride Wore Black is based upon a novel of the same name by author Cornell Woolrich. Woolrich also write the short novel "Rear Window", which was, of course, adapted by Hitchcock into my favorite movie of his.) Jeanne Moreau played the title character. We learn early on that her husband was shot and killed on their wedding day, and she then sets out on a mission of revenge against five men responsible for the killing.
I recorded this one off of TCM. It was in the original French with English subtitles. I was anxious to see it because back in 1968, this movie was shown at the Forum Theater in Squirrel Hill, where the then seventeen year old Grandstander was employed as an usher. I can remember that I liked the movie because "it was like a Hitchcock movie". However, the movie was especially memorable because of this scene that featured a topless Miss Moreau:
In watching the movie this week, I realized that this scene took up about two seconds of actual screen time. It ain't much by today's standards, but to a 17 year old boy in 1968, it was pretty hot stuff.
All that aside, it is still a pretty good movie. A suspenseful thriller and an apt tribute by Truffaut to Hitchcock.
Two and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.
